


A Kiss From Ocean Night

by runsinthefamily



Series: Purgatory [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Purgatory, hurt!castiel, trueform!Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:53:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runsinthefamily/pseuds/runsinthefamily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <img/></p>
<p>Image is from<a href="http://www.behance.net/samebody/frame/6439573">Viktor Lyagushkin's "Lady of Orda Cave" shoot. </a></p>
    </blockquote>





	A Kiss From Ocean Night

**Author's Note:**

> Image is from[Viktor Lyagushkin's "Lady of Orda Cave" shoot. ](http://www.behance.net/samebody/frame/6439573)

_Dean dreams._

_He dreams of battle, of the ending of worlds. Angels, tall and glorious, burning like stars in their true forms. Demons swarming like locusts from the earth. Smoke and Grace and the unearthly screams of the fallen. Lucifer and Micheal flinging themselves at one another, hate and love twisting them together until their wrath broke the very fabric of nature._

_One of the Fallen fled through a crack, trailing terror and rage, and Ramiel followed._

_Through the seething unstuff of the fourth realm zhir sibling fled, past pockets where the souls of Nephilim cowered away from them, past the hazy beginnings of forests and fields. Further in and further down, until zhe brought zhir quarry to bay in the depths of a cave, half-made in the hollows of the almost-earth. The promise of water broke their light against the walls in dapples as they strove. Remiel wounded zhir, and was wounded in return._

_**As I love you, surrender** , one of them said to the other._

_**No** , said the other, sorrowing._

_They fell upon each other again, unable to do otherwise._

_Agony. Grief. The sudden heartbreak swell of triumph. One last raising of a Voice to a Heaven that could not hear it._

_And then._

_Nothing._

***

"Wake."

Dean opens his eyes. 

He's floating, half-tangled with Cas's limp body. There is light, pale and chill, and he is still cold, freezing, in fact, his limbs aching with it. But he can see and he - he isn't breathing. His lungs make an abortive attempt to expand and simply can't. He panics, thrashes, knocks Cas slightly away from him. A wing slides aside and he can see into the small cavern they are in. 

A woman, her blonde hair and white garments drifting around her, observes him dispassionately. "Stop that," she says. "You don't need to breathe."

Dean stops. It still feels weird as hell but she's right. If he just concentrates on not trying to breathe, the need to dissipates. It also means he can't talk. When he opens his mouth to try, water rushes in, numbing his tongue. _Cas,_ he mouths at her. Cas's limbs float gently against his.

"He lives." She seems to be talking normally. Her mouth moves, the sound arrives in Dean's ears, distorted a bit by the water. No bubbles rise, though, and she draws no breath.

Dean turns to Cas again, tugs on his shoulder until Dean can see the weeping, ragged hole where the zebra once was. It makes him want to vomit, or scream. His hand hovers over it, where sluggish stream of liquid light trail through the water.

"His wounds are grievous, but he will survive." She's closer now, and he can see her face. It's square and pale to the point of green. Her nose and mouth are wide. Her eyes are tilted, a strange no-colour that is not quite grey. She has no pupils.

_Who?_ He points at her, trying to come between her and Cas without seeming as if he were doing so. 

She purses her lips. "Poseidon? Yam? Llŷr?" She narrows her eyes at him. "But you are a hunter. To you, I suppose I would be the siren Alpha."

He recoils, collides with Cas's unresponsive form.

She laughs. "No fear, mortal man. I quenched those thirsts millennia ago." She reaches out, touches a fingertip to the hollow at the base of his throat. "I'm not going to seduce you. We should talk, however."

The water is suddenly gone. He drops ten feet to the rock floor of the cavern and manages to roll into it, fetch up against a stalagmite. Cas folds slowly down beside him, collapsing in on himself with a whispery rustle. They are both dry as a bone. Dean draws in a great whoop of air and then coughs.

The Alpha sits down on the rock a few feet away, composing her robes about her. 

"Where are we?" Dean says, when he finishes hacking his lungs out. "The - the thing that attacked Cas -"

"The leviathan fled when you breached your soul." She eyes him with a mix of respect and amusement. 

"Leviathan," he repeats. He's not really surprised.

"A startling tactic, and effective, down here. If not without consequence."

His mouth twists a bit, sour. "Got your attention, did it?" 

"Oh, Dean," she says, shaking her head. "You had my attention the minute you and your companion entered my waters."

"This is your -" he searches for the world Cas had used "- demesne."

"My territory, yes." She brings her knees up and wraps her arms around them. 

"What's your game?" he asks. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. No, really," she says, reading his face. "I don't want anything. I bear you no ill will, you or Castiel. My time in servitude to him was brief and entertaining, in its way. Angels," she says with scornful fondness. "They're so stupid. I suppose they can't help it, but still."

"Hey," he says. For all the times he's called Cas a child, berated him for choices and assumptions, it's just wrong to hear it from someone else. "He isn't stupid. He made some wrong choices."

"Please don't," she says, holding up a hand. "I'm not interested."

"Why the hell are we here, then?" Dean says, irritated. 

"Because it was easier to save you than to deal with him if he woke up and found you dead." She looks down, sighs, and rearranges her skirts. "Love." She smiles a bit, ruefully.

"Yeah, well," says Dean, and doesn't have anything to follow it. He realizes he's smoothing his thumb over the arch of Cas's eyesocket.

Cas stirs under his fingers.

"Hey," says Dean, bending down. "Cas?"

Cas opens his eyes.

Dean lets out a breath, smiles helplessly. Tears well up, unbidden. "Hey, you, uh -"

He's cut off as Cas lunges off the ground, sweeping Dean beneath and behind him with one hand. His wings mantle protectively over Dean. The angel blade makes a reappearance, dropping into Cas's hand from whatever pocket dimension he keeps it in. _**Stay down, Dean!**_ Cas's blood, or Grace, or whatever it is, patters down the rock around Dean. Drops of it spatter onto his hands, his neck. It smells of myrrh and ozone.

"Cas!" he says. "Cas, stop, you're bleeding, goddamnnit!"

_**Queen of the Waters,**_ says Cas. _**What business do you have with us?**_

The Alpha rises to her feet. "Rude," she chides him mildly. "Your human charge was more mannerly."

"Stop," says Dean, desperately. His hands are sticky with angel blood, now. It is flowing in streams down Cas's shoulder and chest. "Cas, stop."

Cas wavers and then lowers his blade. _**We should go.**_

"Cas, you're - she's the first thing that hasn't actively tried to kill us! You need to, to rest, at least. She might even help!"

_**She won't**_ , says Cas.

"I won't," she agrees.

Dean tries to duck out from under Cas and it stopped by the press of Cas' enormous hand against his chest. "What happened to 'no ill will'?" he demands. 

"I think you are mistaking an absence of malice for some form of caring," she says. "I'm a monster, Dean. Every soul here is a monster. Did you forget?"

_**We should go**_ , Cas repeats.

“You won’t get out,” she tells them, as Cas begins to back away, pulling Dean with him. “The gates open from one side only.”

“Oh, and you know everything?” Dean regrets it immediately when she turns her pale eyes on him.

“More than you, mortal child,” she says. “You will die here and your soul will be lost. And he will not be able to save you.”

“We’ve faced down worse,” says Dean. Cas grips him a little firmer and he puts his hand over one of the massive fingers.

“Your pain will bring me no satisfaction,” she says to Castiel. “Please remember that, when grief overwhelms you, and stay your hand from my realm.”

Cas makes some kind of noise, furious and defiant.

“Good bye,” she calls as Cas pulls Dean into a side passage, wraps him into his sticky, Grace-laden wings, and plunges back into the water.


End file.
